Amid the noise and the haste…

These days are dark ones.  Banks are failing.  So is GM and Chrysler.  There’s talk that California is going to run out of cash in a month.  People are losing their carefully-saved retirement funds thousand-by-thousand.

As a Christian, what am I to think?  A dear friend asked, back last winter, when recession was still being denied in Washington DC, if God might redeem a financial meltdown to draw people back to essentials.  I thought it was a good question, then, and I still ponder it now.  The other side I see is the personal, when my dad mentions that he has lost a sum that is greater than I make in years–gone in a flash.  Or, when my coworker says she cannot afford to retire, now, even though she is mentally ready to stop working and sort of uninterested in making the effort to rejuvinate her work, and she has worked through thick and thin for 36 years.

That being said, neither my dad nor my coworker are suffering, aside from existential ennui.  There’s plenty of food to go around, and plenty of comforts, still.  At this dark moment, the people I see in Tyler seem to be sitting pretty.

Shane Claiborne opens the first issue of Conspire magazine with a little piece called “The Conspiracy of Hope,” in which he references a section of the Book of Revelation that I have read recently and wondered about, myself.  He writes:

It’s eerie how relevant the words of Revelation are as they speak of the fall of Babylon.  Babylon is the scriptural icon of empire, “the Great Whore.”  It embodies all the power and splendor of this world.  When Babylon falls, there are two responses: the merchants weep.  And the angels rejoice.  I guess the real question for us today is–ARE WE WEEPING WITH THE MERCHANTS OR REJOICING WITH THE ANGELS?

Now is a time to rejoice, for God is still good.  Resurrection still happens, every day.  The lilies and the sparrows still shame Wall Street’s spendor.  God is still calling people who do not conform to the patterns of this world or the empire out of Babylon to create a new society in the shell of the old.

Where is God not?  Amid what revolution is He irrelevant?  Is there a need for the Creator of All in Tyler, Texas, or do we need God only where war, genocide, famine and natural disaster strike?  Is there room for God to do something brand new even here, amid the comforts of East Texas?

Day Four: Walkers St., a Crawfish boil, and more

Today was our last day working for Habitat for Humanity. We stopped in at the Breaix Mart for ice and more water so we’d have enough to keep the team hydrated. Then, we landed at Walkers St. to try and complete the task we were assigned of completely dismantling the floor of the project house. We are Habitat in reverse.

We actually finished it all, including cleaning the site, by 11:00, and then we waited for Site Supervisor Dan to show back up to inspect our work. After getting the “all clear” from him, we left the site for lunch.

Karri, our Habitat liason, wanted to surprise our team with a crawfish boil for lunch, so she plotted with me and Daniel and Cyndi to take our crew out to a nearby state park to eat our sack lunches in the shade. We arrived just before she did, and enjoyed a crawfish feast!

We spent about an hour and a half at the park, enjoying being outside, chasing a snake, and resting. Then, Karri returned with keys to three other homes that each needed a bit of time to help get them closer to a resident move in.

After dropping us off, Daniel took Sara back to Blue Stone to rest–she hadn’t been feeling well all day.

We split the team in two, with Cyndi, Allison and Daniel mopping the floors of two newly-completed homes and patching drywall in one where the plumber had cut the wall. Me and Jeremy O., Jeremy G., Katie, Rachel and Lacy all worked painting the interior of another house on the same street; Karri said it would be move-in ready in a little over a month.

Afterwards, we returned to our favorite snowball stand for a cool and tasty treat, and Karri joined us, bringing with her a copy of the local paper featuring us on the cover! Thanks to us being presentthe the decommissioning yesterday, we made the paper (at least our photo did).

We came back home and just stayed in for our last night together. Cyndi and Daniel ran to a tracery store and returned with Boudin and gumbo, and Cyndi cooked it all up whilst we played and visited. It was a great night, even without a baseball game or a movie.

We plan to head out about 9 in the morning, after breakfast and packing and cleaning up here. Pray for traveling mercies for our team as we head back to Tyler. ETA 6:00 pm.

Day Three: Walker st. and closing of Camp Hope

Our morning began with a quick stop by the Breaux Mart for ice and sunscreen en route to the house on Walker street; we are basically tearing down what other volunteers have built there because of local code issues with the position of the slab.  We are attacking the problem, regardless, knowing that George–the homeowner–cannot get back into his house until we get what is there removed so others can come to build there.

We worked hard there up until lunchtime, when we loaded back onto our trusty people-mover and headed back to Camp Hope to enjoy barbecue at the decommissioning of Camp Hope.  It was listening to the speeches of the director of Habitat and other people who have struggled for years in attempts to rebuild St. Bernard Parish that I finally began to see the immense scope of the destruction of this area, and the vast progress that has been made here.  There is still so very much left to do here, though….

After a delicious lunch, we headed back to Walker street and got a sizable amount of work done.  We only accidentally engaged in water-balloon fights twice after lunch, thanks to Carrie’s foresight in procuring balloons and recruiting Katie and others to help fill them with ice-cold water!

Back at Blue Stone Ministeries, we all cleaned up and settled in for the evening.  Some people cooked for the rest of us, some people read or talked or computed, and some of us slept for two hours or so.  Okay, by “some of us,” I mean me.

After dinner, we watched a couple of videos that Keith produced for local charaties here to help the with their fundraising and volunteer recruitment, and we heard one survivor’s story–Gary, a good friend and fellow restorer with Keith, survived Katrina, and has finally been able to move back into his house as of last August.  He says that returning to “normal” has been bittersweet because of the loss of community with so many of his neighbors passing away or moving on.  He told of his personal struggle to survive for the six days without help from the outside world–no food, no water: nothing.  He also spoke of the high rate of suicide among survivors, and the sense of despair that many non-Christians struggle with, now.  Evidently, stress is really high when you live in a trailer or an unfinished home for years on end….  He also thanks all the faith-based missionaries, as they have been the most effective effort in the restoration of the state.

The need here is staggering.  It makes me even more brightened by the enthusiasm of our team.

Day Two: Walker st. House and Bourbon st.

We began our work day back at Camp Hope, where we finished cleaning up, Allison learned to drive a Bobcat, and a bunch of us revisited the old courthouse on the property.

After a couple hour’s work, we were through, but Dan was not quite ready for us at Walker st., so we took a mini tour out to a fishing village still in recovery from Katrina. You could see that the area had once been strangely beautiful before so much debris came to be smashed.

We were called back to Walker st. To begin work at lunch time, so we ate before beginning to remove all the nails from the sub floor and pulling up sub floor as we could. It was hard work mostly because of the hot sunshine. Carrie from Habitat continued to be a great sport and asset to our group today, insisting on frequent breaks and even pulling our whole team under the house for a while during the heat of the day to get us out of the sun.

After working, we followed Carrie to a famous shaved ice stand–a snow ball stand, to be NOLA proper.

We ended our day with our first trip into New Orleans itself. We had delicious pizzas at Angelis Pizzaria on Decatur st. (the Lucifer and the Angelis’ special were so good!), before strolling past Jackson Square to enjoy Cafe au Lait and Begnait at Cafe du Monde. Finally, we wandered the shops of the French Quarter and then headed back to Blue Stone for the night.

Our group could not be more delightful–these are bright, enthusiastic young people. I am learning a lot from them!

Day One: cleanup at Camp Hope

Because of the holiday yesterday, there was some confusion about where we were to work today. Carrie from Habitat arrived at our site and offered us some choices, and we opted to do the work most pressing to Habitat, which is getting Camp Hope ready for destruction.

The work was good, especially if you like cutting up old trusses and dragging piles of refuse lumber to a large container dumpster about 100 yards away. We also cleared and destroyed shelves in several rooms.

I’m pretty certain that Jeremy found a new hobby, using a large sledgehammer to break up refuse lumber. And Galen oversaw the stacking of half trusses in the second container of the day. Daniel, Jeremy, Galen, Sara, Rachel and Katie all broke into an abandoned courthouse on the property; the place is seriously spooky, so much so that a reality TV show–Thirteen–filmed there recently,using it as a haunted house.

Everyone worked really hard. We are all pretty beat. We’ve made it home to Blue Stone, showered, and most everyone is relaxing. We have an amazing group of young people here–beautiful hearts, every one! They all worked with bright smiles, which even the Habitat people noticed.

I’m proud to be with this group.